


Tomorrow Began Yesterday

by icewhisper



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 13:26:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13571484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icewhisper/pseuds/icewhisper
Summary: The migraines started in 2014, but what came with them were odd memories of things that never happened; something that worried Mick, scared Lisa, and confused Len.(AKA – Someone should really call tech support about those memory erasers.)





	Tomorrow Began Yesterday

Len started getting migraines in 2014, annoying when they began, but growing into horrible, crippling fits that lasted for days. Jobs got scrapped because he couldn’t find the strength to peel himself off the bathroom floor. Lisa became a nervous wreck, wringing her hands and tiptoeing around their safe houses the way she used to when she had to avoid their father. She begged him to see a doctor, but he waved her off. He was fine, he’d tell her, but they both knew he was lying. He’d gone from someone that would barely consent to taking an Advil to keeping bottles of Excedrin buried deep in the pockets of his parka.

The first time Mick caught him in the throes of one, Len vomited all over his partner’s shoes, insisting he was fine until the vision in his left eye went dark.

Mick drove him to a back alley doctor and paid the man under the table. No guns. No threats. He called himself Len’s husband and let Len hide his face in his neck until the doctor coaxed him onto a table. A quiet supply of injections—ones that no self-respecting doctor would have given so quickly if they were in a legit hospital—with strict instructions on how to use them and how often. Mick nodded along, attention focused in ways he usually reserved for a flame, and drove them back to the old farm in Keystone that had never been sold.

He buried Len under blankets and covered the windows until not even a sliver of light could come through. Then, he left him alone, curled up in the bed of what used to be his childhood bedroom.

Len didn’t drag himself out of bed until the next night, rested and zombie-like at the same time, but Mick was the one he focused on. He was already miles past drunk, ass planted on the front steps and toasting to his family’s ghosts.

“We didn’t need to come here,” he told Mick as he reached over to take the mostly-empty bottle from his partner’s hand.

Mick shrugged a shoulder and didn’t offer an explanation. Len knew it was the quietest place they had, set far back from the road and private, but it tore Mick to pieces every time they came around. He’d spent years restoring the house like it was an apologetic shrine to his family, but Len wondered if that just made it hurt worse.

He hated the old farmhouse as much as Mick did. Every time they came, he flashed back to a hot morning in 1990 when he woke up to the phone ringing, Lewis livid, and Mick sobbing into a phone at the police station.

_“They’re dead. The fire. I couldn’t… I killed them, Lenny. Oh, God, I killed them all.”_

He reached over to squeeze Mick’s knee in a quiet comfort that made his partner’s breath hitch.

_“I want my mom, Lenny. I want my mom.”_

They didn’t talk about it for weeks, stone-faced and silent as they worked on jobs and pretended that they both weren’t avoiding a herd of elephants in the room. Migraines and ghosts and houses they should have let nature reclaim. Len’s fits still came, some longer than others, but he took his prescriptions behind closed doors and feigned sleep any time Mick looked at him too long.

He woke up one morning to an ache that was more headache than migraine and frowned when he saw black sheets taped over windows. “Mick,” he said when he joined him by the little kitchenette in their latest safe house, “do you want to explain the new curtains?”

His partner glanced up from the eggs on his plate. “You kept muttering about dark last night. Figured your head was starting up again.”

It hadn’t been. The headache felt more like the seasonal allergies he’d suffered from his whole life. Still, he didn’t remember saying anything about darkness and he shrugged it off as he honed in on the coffee pot.

“Eggs are on the stove,” Mick said as he stuffed another forkful into his mouth.

“I-”

“Scrambled,” he added with an eye roll, but didn’t comment on Len’s pathological hatred for runny yolks. “Next job set?”

Len smothered the eggs in ketchup just to watch Mick’s eyebrow start twitching. “All goes according to plan, we might finally make it to Aruba.”

They made it there, luggage lined with bills and Len squeezing Mick’s hand until the bones began to grind together. They didn’t make it out onto the beach until the third day.

 

 

Lisa dragged Mick into research, pulling up information on chronic conditions and possible causes. He didn’t remember any head trauma, but he muttered about losing a day a year ago and coming to with a hazy mind while he looked out at the waterfront.

“I think you were there,” he told Mick before he remembered that, no, he hadn’t been. At that point, he hadn’t gone back for Mick with a present of a heat gun and a renewed partnership.

“Shit like that’s why Lisa’s convinced you have a damn tumor, you know,” Mick muttered under his breath. Len didn’t bother reminding him that scan had come back clean. “You’ve been off since this crap started. Your memory’s fucked. You damn near had a meltdown when you heard that detective’s name over the scanner. Thawne-”

Len jerked before his back went stiff.

“Just like that. Len, what the hell is going on?”

He was silent for a long time, jaw clenched and eyes focused off towards Mick’s left. Finally, he sighed. “I don’t know.”

“You always know something, boss.”

“I don’t _know_ ,” Len said again, but it came out in a snap this time. He shoved away from the rickety table in the safe house.

“Len-”

“Don’t.”

They didn’t talk about it again, burying it down underneath a mountain of other things they didn’t talk about. Len took his meds and endured the migraines as they came. Mick bit his tongue and tried to not worry when his partner muttered about Thawne and darkness and King Arthur’s wizard.

Lisa kept worrying—loudly—until she caught Len on a bad day and he snapped at her, tone so reminiscent of their dad that she reared back like she’d been slapped.

Len’s hands shook for an hour afterwards.

 

 

Lewis came back, Lisa ended up with a bomb in her neck, and Len ended up in prison-orange for putting ice through the bastard’s chest. He didn’t regret it for a damn second. He doubted that fit into Barry’s idea about there being good in him, but the speedster hadn’t been by since he’d given him the strangely-proud speech.

“There is good in you, Lenny,” Lisa told him once when she visited, but they both knew it wasn’t the kind of good Barry was talking about. He’d go to the ends of the earth to protect his sister and let the world burn in the process. He thought Mick would appreciate it.

There was enough good in him to keep him from being the bastard their father was, but there was no hero in him. No matter what Barry said. No matter what Mick said to him one night at Saints & Sinners.

 

 

He spent too much time with the prison doctor, biting his lip and dealing with a hatred of needles as she administered his meds. She asked him the same questions Mick and Lisa had drilled him with—if more clinical—and they were familiar enough with each other that he gave her mostly-honest answers. They were the same things he’d told Mick and Lisa when they’d first asked, but the soft-spoken woman was the one that made the official diagnosis.

She added _chronic migraines_ to the list of medical conditions in his file, right under _10% hearing loss in right ear_ and beside the psychological column that read _kleptomania_. The look she gave him said she suspected more could have been shoved under the second column, but it would have required him to sit down with a proper shrink.

He never got around to telling her about the foggy memories he could and couldn’t remember happening. Things that his gut said happened, but that his mind couldn’t place. Faces of people he’d never met and _Mick_. He wondered if she would have been more insistent about the shrink if she’d known.

“Scale of one to ten?” she asked him one night as he contemplated clawing his brain out through his ears.

“Six,” he ground out, but he ended up seizing on a bed in the prison infirmary. He woke up cuffed to a bed at the hospital and told himself Mick and Lisa would never find out.

 

 

Mick visited exactly once while he was in prison, dark circles under his eyes and Len was pretty sure he could smell whiskey through the glass separating them.

“You shouldn’t stay at the farm,” he told him, because Lisa had passed _that_ bit along the last time she came by.

“Needed a new roof,” Mick grunted, but Len wished he’d just let it go. That damn house and its ghosts were going to destroy him and he couldn’t do a damn thing about it while he was stuck in Iron Heights. “I’m fine. When are you getting out?”

Len glanced over his shoulder discreetly, clocking the guard that was positioned by the door. “Soon,” he murmured into the phone. “You know where to meet up after?”

“Lexington.”

He hummed the affirmative. “Get off the farm and sober up. We won’t get the next job done if you’re hungover.”

 

 

He was out a week earlier than he planned, broken free by Mardon and Jesse instead of by the plan he’d been working on since Barry dumped him back behind bars. It wasn’t clean—not that he could have expected it from those two—but he followed after them, because a week early was better than a month late. Failed or not, a breakout would mean security at the prison being raised tenfold and his own plans weren’t prepared for that. He’d never get out on time if they added more security. The lesser of two evils, he told himself, and it would get Mick out of that house sooner.

Mick was still half drunk when he reached him, but he didn’t fight it when Len poured the booze down the drain and got them out of Keystone. He was sober by the time they knocked over a small jewelry store in Opal City just to get back into the swing of things. They celebrated with grins and a welcome home fuck that left Len’s hips bruised and Mick gasping into his neck.

Afterwards, he trailed his fingers across the burn scars on Mick’s shoulders, eyes focused on the ceiling, and utterly failing at not thinking about the last time they’d been at this safe house. Before the fire. Before things fell to pieces and he didn’t think he’d ever see Mick again.

“Why did you ask to meet me?” he asked suddenly.

“What?”

“After the fire. You had me meet you at Saints & Sinners,” he clarified. “You gave me some line about being a hero to you and left.”

Mick lifted his head, frowning. “Never told you that, Len. First time I saw you after that job was when you gave me the gun.” He shifted, reaching up to tap his fingers against Len’s temple. “Your head’s doing that thing again.”

He turned his head away from the touch. “Stop that.”

“Len-”

“Don’t ruin it, Mick.”

Mick huffed, but he wrapped his arm around Len again. “You’re gonna have to talk about it sometime.”

 

 

They never got around to talking about it, not before Rip Hunter kidnapped them to a rooftop and Len’s plans of building a bigger name for themselves turned into them joining a suicide mission.

“We’re not dying on this stupid thing,” Mick grumbled at him after Carter had died and they had to admit that Savage might actually be able to outsmart them. “Wouldn’t have let you drag me out here if I thought we were gonna die.”

“I didn’t say we both were,” he reminded him at a murmur. He rubbed his fingers together—a nervous tick he’d had since he was a kid—and glanced at the bottle clutched in his partner’s fist. They weren’t going to die, something in his gut knew they weren’t, but there was a nagging voice in the back of his head that was as persistent as his migraines. “I have a bad feeling.”

Something wasn’t right. They never should have joined the ship in the first place, but every thought he’d had about why it was a horrible idea—death, annoying do-gooders, _they weren’t heroes_ —had been annoyingly absent until they’d left Central.

“Why don’t we go back if you’ve got that bad a feeling about it?” Mick asked and kept asking it every time Len muttered that this entire trip was a bad idea. It was _his_ idea, Mick would remind him, but it didn’t make either of them feel any better.

He asked it again after they’d gotten him and Palmer from the gulag, flicking his lighter open and closed. He was going for casual and failing. Len knew he wanted to go home. The ship was stifling enough for him, but there was nowhere for Mick to burn anything. He was getting antsy and agitated. It was going to bite them all in the ass and, normally, he’d be able to rein Mick in fine, but his head never seemed to stop aching anymore and it felt like Mick was slipping out of Len’s reach.

“It feel like Alexa?” Mick asked when Len didn’t answer, brows furrowed in worry. He stopped playing with the lighter.

“Not yet,” he said after a long moment and wished he could figure out what it felt like.

 

 

  1. Pirates. Mick. Forests.



Too late, Len realized the entire mission stank of Shreveport.

 

 

Mick was Chronos.

The thought banged around in his head like a bullet, setting off pieces of him that made light burn his eyes and his ears want to bleed at the slightest sound. Pain. Regret. Anger. Hurt. He hated himself for leaving Mick behind—how could he have chosen them over _Mick_?—and hated the Time Masters for messing with his partner’s head.

Nausea churned his stomach and he swallowed it back. Broke his own hand off like it was some kind of twisted metaphor for a broken heart and bit the inside of his cheek until it bled.

Saving Mick didn’t make him feel any better, staring at him through the glass walls of the cell they didn’t have when Rip told him to take care of his partner. It would have been safer then, he thought as he slipped back to his room and used his left hand to jab himself with one of his injections. Wondered how much it would help against the pain of the amputation as it worked at the pain growing in his head.

He gave himself a second shot for good measure.

Shreveport. Alexa. The whole trip was going wrong and he couldn’t figure out _why_. He was a planner by nature. There was no reason why things should have been blowing up in their faces that often.

“What the hell happened to your hand?!”

Jax grabbed him by the elbow before Len had fully processed the kid entering his room. Couldn’t remember if the door had slid shut behind him or if Jax had let himself in. It didn’t matter. He was there and Len was tensing under a touch he didn’t want, but he couldn’t find the strength to wrench his arm away.

“Snart, look at me. You’re freaking me out.”

Leave, he thought. He hadn’t asked Jax to come looking for him. The kid probably wanted to talk about the way he’d lied to them. He’d let the team think Mick was dead, let them stare at him like he was some kind of monster for offing someone that he’d known most of his life. Maybe killing Mick would have been nicer, something more humane than becoming the Time Master’s pet.

He should have let Mick go home.

He shouldn’t have convinced Mick to come on the ship at all.

They never should have left Central.

“Gideon, get Rip. I think he’s going into shock.”

“I’m fine,” he forced out, but it sounded strangled even to his own ears. Detached. Dissociating. Clinical terms buzzed around his head that spoke of too many years of prison shrinks and Mick making him sit down with his own when his head stopped making sense. There was something wrong with him, something that worried Mick, scared Lisa, and confused Len, because he _remembered_ things that never happened. Hazy memories and concerned looks.

“Mr. Snart, can you focus on me?”

“Rip, his hand… How-”

More hands. Len heard a noise that sounded like a dying cat. Realized too late that it was him.

“It’s frostbite. Traumatic amputation-”

“Did Mick-”

“I did,” he whispered. “The cuffs…”

“You froze off your own hand?” Jax echoed, baffled and sick, but Len didn’t doubt the kid would have done the same for Stein. He would have pointed it out if it weren’t for the pain growing in his head, pounding and pulsing like he’d never taken anything for it. He had, he thought. He did. Two shots, didn’t he? He couldn’t remember anymore.

“We need to get him to the med bay. Jax, help me get him up.”

“He’s right-handed, Rip. Why would he…”

“You were going to kill him,” Len croaked. It turned into a cry when they hefted him to his feet and the pain shot through his head like a hot knife. His knees buckled. “My head…”

They lowered him down again—to the floor, this time—and he flattened his remaining hand against the cold metal like it would calm the fire burning in his skull. Someone else’s hand stayed heavy on his back, but the floor vibrated with the steps of heavy boots as Rip distanced himself.

“Gideon, can you scan him from here.”

“Negative, Captain,” she said, softer than normal, but it still tore a pained whimper out of Len, “but prison records show he was diagnosed with chronic migraines in 2015.”

“Lights to ten-percent,” Rip told her as he lowered his voice. “Stay with him. I’m going to get some things from the med bay until he’s stable enough to get there himself.”

Jax must have nodded, because he didn’t say anything, but the hand on his back trembled. Len didn’t try to shrug it off, just kept his eyes closed and his body still as strength seemed to leave him. Shaking. Numbness. He thought of Mick in armor he didn’t belong in and _hisfaulthisfaulthisfault_.

The world faded out to a haze of blood rushing in his ears and pain lacing through his head and up his arm. Jax might have stayed, but he also might have left. Len didn’t know, didn’t even really care, but Rip was there when he peeled himself off the floor hours later. His arm still hurt, but someone had wrapped it in a bandage and slipped a cuff around his good wrist, pad side down to push painkillers into his system. Something that mixed safely with his meds, he was sure.

“Back with us?” Rip asked, but Len kept his eyes trained on the floor as he used his one hand to push himself to his feet. His head still hurt, but it was the dying ache of a migraine instead of its worst stages. He’d had worse.

“Playing nurse, Rip?” he drawled, but the sarcasm seemed to fall flat when the captain didn’t rise to the bait.

“You need to let Gideon take a look at that,” he said. Len didn’t need to look to know he was gesturing to the stump he was cradling against his chest. “The bandage is only a temporary fix. The ice is still melting.”

“I think I’ll wait until the others aren’t around to gawk.” It was bad enough that Jax had seen him like that. At the very least, the kid knew how to compartmentalize and focus on the task at hand, but the others were another matter. He didn’t need Sara poking her nose into it or Ray _feeling_ all over the place.

“The others are rather preoccupied in the brig, Mr. Snart. You need to take care of your hand before infection sets in.”

He nodded once, eyes focused somewhere to Rip’s left rather than on the captain himself. He didn’t ask if the others knew about his hand, figured they did, because there was no privacy on the ship. No privacy. No secrets.

He stopped at the door and turned fully to Rip. “Where was that cell when you told me to kill him?” he asked, biting and angry and _why_.

Rip’s face flickered somewhere between guilt and something else Len couldn’t identify. “I don’t know,” he admitted with a weight that made Len’s own shoulders feel heavy. The truth, then. “I never thought of it. I wish I had.”

He wanted to argue, wanted to snap that he was no use as a captain if he forgot they had cells downstairs. He didn’t. Couldn’t. He’d walked every inch of the ship when they boarded, learning each nook and cranny, and even he hadn’t thought of it. Mick got out of control and none of them had ever considered it.

Alexa, he thought. It was all starting to feel like Alexa.

 

 

He avoided Mick’s cell like he used to avoid Lewis on the bad nights; alternate routes and careful excuses about why he couldn’t go down to that part of the ship. His new hand—restored, because whatever future tech Gideon had was as amazing as it was creepy—twitched, foreign and familiar at the same time. The cigarette burns on the inside of his wrist were gone, skin smooth for the first time in nearly forty years. He tried not to look at the hand much.

But it worked. The hand worked like the old one used to and life carried on. Mick was steaming in his cell, angry and brainwashed and _not Mick_.

Sara asked him if he was okay while they played cards on her bed one night. Another time, he would have made a crack that was half-sarcasm and half-flirting, but his heart wasn’t in it. Simple games that were never intended to go anywhere had suddenly lost their humor and even she seemed to notice.

“Snart?”

“Fine,” he said and tossed down the hand. He swiped the small pile of cash off the mattress. “I’m out.”

“We only played two hands,” she argued, but she let him leave. That time, she didn’t even bother trying to tell him he needed to talk to Mick.

He wouldn’t have had time to, anyway, he could have told her, because Rip was calling them all onto the bridge. Savage. A lead. The ship hurtled them across the time stream to Siberia and a year he couldn’t even make himself care about. They were far enough from civilization that Rip didn’t push them about era-appropriate clothing.

It didn’t matter. The lead was a dead end. The others returned to the ship, annoyed and exhausted, but he lingered behind them. Themed-supervillain persona aside, he actually _liked_ the cold. It cleared his mind, chilling his body from the inside out, and the crunch of snow under his boots had always been pleasing.

His mom used to love it, he remembered with a sigh, waking him up with a childlike glee, because she was sure she could smell the first snow of the year.

Barry interrupted his walk with tempting talks of heists and ARGUS—he’d had a score to settle with them for damn near a decade—and he went. Something lit up in the back of his mind like a warning, urges to stay on track and return to the ship. He had a mission. He couldn’t veer off course.

He’d never been very good at following rules.

He followed Barry back to 2017.

 

 

They should have expected he’d call Lisa.

He hadn’t expected that she’d start crying and tell him he’d _died_.

He was less surprised—though, somewhat annoyed in the way any big brother was—when she called Cisco immediately after and the heroes practically stumbled over themselves to try and explain while also keeping the timeline intact. Whatever iteration of Harrison Wells there was in 2017—did they just get a new one every year?—tried to tell him it was all a dream.

Cisco may have given himself a concussion from how hard his palm hit his forehead.

“Get me out of it,” he told them and directed a cool look towards Barry. “Consider it payment.”

“Snart… I… We have to keep the timeline intact.”

“This entire problem is happening because you changed a timeline.”

Barry cringed.

“Kinda the point, man,” Ramon said, but there was a hint of sympathy and lingering bitterness that made Len wonder what they hadn’t been able to fix for him. “Messing with the timeline doesn’t usually work out too well.”

“That what you’re planning to tell Lisa?” he asked, one eyebrow quirked up. A low blow if there ever was one, but it made Cisco cringe and West shoot him a warning look.

“How much did she tell you?”

“Enough.” All of it, every last detail Mick had told her when he’d apparently shown up at her safe house drunk and halfway to crying. Not Chronos, he thought as his regenerated hand twitched, _Mick_.

Barry sighed. “Snart-”

“I got you what you need to save your fiancée,” he reminded him as he shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his parka. “Doesn’t quite measure up if the hero’s thank you is to drop me off to die, does it?”

“That’s not fair,” Barry protested, but he looked pained.

It wasn’t a card he wanted to play. His private life was just that, but he was talking to heroes and bleeding hearts that believed in true love. He let his eyes fall shut rather than let them see the vulnerability. “I’m all my sister has,” he told them. “I’m all _Mick_ has.”

“The team-”

“The same team that told me to put him out to pasture when he got too unruly?” he clarified and opened his eyes in time to see Barry and Cisco both pale. He could have said more, could have told them that his gut said something wasn’t right, that he was starting to suspect something was messing with him, but he refocused on Barry instead. “You want to save Iris. I don’t want Mick to end up a widower.”

The way their eyebrows shot up was worth the uncomfortable feeling that he’d shared too much.

“You and _Heatwave_?” Cisco sputtered.

“You’re married?” Barry echoed, voice suddenly weak.

He pulled a chain out from under his sweater, silver ring shining under the lab’s lights. “Not everyone wears them on their hand.” Even if it was mostly because he’d still been too skinny when they’d gotten married. Age and broken fingers that meant he couldn’t quite get it past the knuckle on the right finger anymore.

His hand drifted down to touch the ring for just a moment before he let it fall completely. There was only so much vulnerability he’d let them see, only so much truth before they’d start seeing the manipulation it was playing into.

“There’s no guarantee anything could work,” Cisco said, reluctant. Funny, Len thought. He would have thought Barry would crack first, but the tech had always had a soft spot for Lisa. “I talked to Ray about what happened when you… The-”

He held up a hand, silencing him. “I’m better off not knowing,” he said and pretended he wasn’t kicking himself for it. “Know too much, things won’t line up right.”

They built a plan he only knew half of before Barry returned him to the Waverider with thanks and promises that they’d be there in time.

For once, he put his faith in the heroes.

 

 

The Oculus.

A flash of blue.

Pain shooting up his arm.

Wind.

It wasn’t Barry holding onto his arm when he opened his eyes and registered that he was standing in STAR Labs. Yellow leather and a cowl up, but dark skin peeked out from underneath. Everyone else was there. Cisco with glasses that looked more like tech than fashion. A dark-skinned girl beside him. Iris. Doctor Snow. A disapproving Detective West.

Lisa.

She darted out from behind the computer banks with a cry of his name and launched herself forward.

Stopped.

Stared.

“Lenny, your arm…”

He looked down, adrenaline giving way to realization. His left sleeve was gone, burned off to the elbow and the skin beneath didn’t look much better. The burns seemed to glow blue, shifting and shimmering and he touched his fingers to it even as the good doctor tried to tell him not to.

He went stiff, eyes locked on blue scorch marks while memories flashed through his mind. Legions. Dhark. Thawne. Merlyn. Mick. A cruelness that had always felt more like his father than like him. A shard of ice through his partner’s back. The warehouse at the docks. A flash. His memory-

He tore his hand away like the burns were still hot—they were _cold_ —and stumbled back a step.

“Snart, you okay?” Cisco asked, cautious as he laid a light hand on Lisa’s arm.

“Get the Waverider here.”

“Man, the timeline-”

“It’s fine,” he told them with a bone-deep knowledge. It was okay. It was safe for Mick to know Team Flash had pulled him out. They needed him. “They broke time.”

“They did what now?”

Snow stepped forward. “You should let me look you over first,” she told him. “Your eyes are kind of…glowing.”

“It’s sorta creepy, actually,” the other Flash said as he tugged his cowl off.

He let himself get herded to the little medical area, but he glared at the bulk of them until everyone but the doctor and Lisa had left. They traded off explaining the rescue as Snow went through the exam and started off with a full admission that none of them had thought it would work.

“Cindy’s more familiar with the Vanishing Point,” Lisa told him while Snow did an impressive job at not reacting to his scars when the shirt got cut away. “It was one of the areas she used to look into when she got her breaching powers. Nothing ever _really_ exists out of time, but she was able to help Cisco get into the right frequency. The right moment-”

“They opened a breach and Wally went in to pull you out-”

“The kid in yellow?” he cut in.

“Iris’ brother,” Lisa explained. “Long story. You wouldn’t care. They tried to get as close as they could, but the window was pretty short.”

“It had to be then,” he mumbled, gut saying that they _couldn’t_ have gotten him out any sooner. He looked down at the burns on his arm as they flickered a little brighter. “The whole thing had to be on its way to blowing before you could get me out.”

“Lenny?”

He shrugged a shoulder. He didn’t know how he knew.

“Flag them down,” he told Lisa. “Make something up to get him here.” His gaze moved to Snow. “Just bandage it up. Gideon can fix the rest back on the ship.”

“Snart-”

“Listen to him,” Lisa said and squeezed his good hand. “I’ll get Mick. He’s been checking in with the Rogues. I’ll tell him Hartley’s going on a date with Charlie or something.”

Len barked out a laugh. “Oh, he’d love that.” Charlie was harmless, cannibalistic tendencies aside. He’d gone after Len a time or two—maybe six—in the past. Had Len not had Mick and had Mick not put _stay the fuck away from Charlie_ in their vows, he might have said yes at one point.

Mick had always said he had no sense of self-preservation.

“I could tell him they’re having dinner at Charlie’s,” Lisa offered, an evil little glint in her eye that she’d _definitely_ learned from him. “Get him here faster.”

“Tell Mick Charlie’s cooking. New recipe,” he said and decided, “Barbecue. Tell him it’s barbecue.”

“Perfect.”

“You’re both horrible,” Snow accused, but Len could see her smiling.

“ _Villains_ ,” he reminded her.

“Died a _hero_ ,” she countered and gestured at the arm she was wrapping.

“I wasn’t about to let Mick die.”

“Better that you did?”

“…Yes?”

“Don’t try and use logic with him,” Lisa told Snow with a long-suffering sigh. “Mick’s been threatening to put him in a plastic bubble for years. He’s actually gonna do it now.”

“Bet I could break out of the bubble.”

“Not if it’s that or divorce.”

Damn it.

 

 

They were late.

They had a time ship and they were _late_.

“Who the hell is flying that thing?” Len asked, tone bordering on a whine. He was sick of the bed in their little med bay. It was uncomfortable and the bandages Snow had put on his arm were _itchy_. And he wanted to see Mick.

“Sara,” Cisco said, apologetic. “She’s pretty good at flying it, but the landings are hit or miss.”

“They have a trained pilot on board and she’s the one driving.” Incredible. Even without the Time Masters fucking with them, they were still managing to make decisions that made no sense.

“Rip’s not with them anymore,” Cisco said.

“I meant Mick.”

“Oh.”

 

 

Len was halfway through a container of lo mein when Hartley finally called Lisa, complaining about a date he was _way_ too smart to go on and why the hell was Mick giving him lectures about safe dating?

Lisa laughed so hard she had to hang up the phone.

Cisco stared at her like he was both scared of her and a little more in love.

Cynthia looked about the same.

He was so not having the threesome conversation with his sister.

 

 

“Lisa, why the hell would you tell me Hart was going on a date with that psycho when-”

Mick stopped, staring at Len wide-eyed as he lost his train of thought. Which Len couldn’t really fault him for, honestly, formerly-dead-husband sitting ten feet away with a mouthful of Chinese and all.

“We got you mushu pork,” Len said and pointed at the container with his chopsticks.

Mick closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Lisa…”

“You were right,” Len added, “there was something really weird about the migraines. You guys should check on that memory-eraser of yours.”

Huh. He did not realize Mick could go stiffer than he already was.

“Plus, I think the Oculus gave me weird powers,” he finished, “or turned me into a nightlight. The jury’s still out on that one.”

“The Oculus,” Mick repeated blankly.

“Does that mean I missed two years or are you just two years older now?” Len questioned and that seemed to be the thing that broke Mick out of his stupor, because he barely had time to put his chopsticks down before Mick was tugging him to his feet.

The kiss was unexpected, more public than they were used to, but Len could deal with it. It was nice and he’d sort of been expecting a punch, so he’d take the alternative. The alternative had more tongue.

“You’re a bastard,” Mick gasped when the kiss ended, some broken little thing that made Len’s own chest hurt. “You _died_.”

“Technically, I skipped ahead to maintain the timeline,” he corrected.

That time, Mick smacked him upside the head.

Then, hugged him.

Len let him hold on as long as he wanted and reached for his lo mein with his good arm.

The End


End file.
